Automated monitoring and control solutions of home and industrial environments have led to safer homes and increased efficiencies of production processes. However, until recently, the full potential of automated monitoring and control solutions was held back by limitations of conventional wired networks. Wireless automated solutions enhance both data acquisition scope and reliability while facilitating growth and expansion through the deployment of highly scalable systems. Wireless automated systems can be implemented in any securable platform, for example, on a ZigBee® platform.
The ZigBee platform is based upon the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 802.15.4 standard and has seen significant growth and acceptance in home and industrial applications. ZigBee can be found in a relatively large number of devices and systems, e.g., home entertainment, home automation, smart lighting, advanced temperature control, safety and security, movies and music, wireless sensor networks, industrial controls, embedded sensing, medical data collection and building automation. ZigBee devices typically consume small amounts of power and deploy a mesh network structure. Mesh networks are reliable because they offer redundancy. When one node can no longer operate, the rest of the nodes can still communicate with each other, directly or through one or more intermediate nodes.
ZigBee devices can contain integrated circuits with a combination of a computer processor, a memory and input/output ports combined with a radio transceiver. The ZigBee's radios usually operate in the industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) radio bands, which includes 2.4 GHz in most jurisdictions worldwide with data rates varying from 20 kbit/s to 250 kbit/s.
A potential security issue can occur when the network receives request from a wireless automated device currently paired with the network to reestablish its connection, i.e., “re-pair,” with the network. Pairing is a known process used in computer networking that sets up a linkage between computing devices to allow communications between them. When a pairing successfully completes between two devices, e.g., a network controller or “host,” and a network device such as a home automation sensor, actuator, etc., a link is established between the two devices, enabling those two devices to connect to each other in the future without repeating the pairing process to confirm device identities.